Ep. 5 - Soccer, Culture, and Community Growth with Alan Gooding and Alex Thaley of The Botanical at 8th and A

Prepare yourself for a global journey as we kick the ball around the world, exploring the rich tapestry of soccer cultures in the United States, Europe, and South America. Our expert guides for this tour are none other than Alan Gooding and Alex Thaley, the co-owners of the The Botanical - International Sports Pub on 8th and A. Drawing from their personal experiences, these soccer aficionados share their insights about the distinct passions and cultural approaches to soccer and how the game morphs into a way of life in different corners of the globe.

The second half is no less thrilling as we pull back the curtains on the world of soccer bars, shedding light on The Botanical - a soccer bar with an international twist right in the heart of Arkansas. Getting a closer look at the thriving community of Northwest Arkansas, we delve into the region's exponential growth, cultural diversity, and potential for soccer integration. Whether you're a soccer fan or interested in the intersection of cultures and community growth, this episode is your ticket to an exhilarating journey through the world of soccer.

Transcript

Wes Harris: 0:04

Pitch to Pro is the official podcast of USL Arkansas. This will be our platform to tell our story about the club and the special place that we call home, northwest Arkansas. This is a journey we want to bring you along for the ride. We'll share what's going on behind the curtain, help educate the community at large about soccer, our league, and give updates on the progress of the club along the way. Together, we'll explore and unpack our journey to professional soccer, the magic that is NWA, our community, and talk all things soccer from on the pitch to behind the scenes, telling the story of our club.

Wes Harris: 0:42

Pitch to Pro Podcast is proudly sponsored by PodcastVideoscom. Podcastvideoscom is Northwest Arkansas's premier podcast recording studio, equipped with industry-leading equipment. The recording studio and services save you time, money and hassle. They are dedicated to helping you create, record and publish high-quality podcasts for your audience. Be sure to check them out today at PodcastVideoscom. Hello everybody and welcome back to the Pitch to Pro Podcast. I'm your host, wes Harris, managing director for USL Arkansas, northwest Arkansas's professional soccer club, playing in the USL or the United Soccer League. Today I am so excited to have joined me some good friends and co-owners of one of the coolest new spots in town, the International Sports Club, the Botanical, at 8th and A. I've got Mr Alan Gooding and Mr Alex Delay here. Gents, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm so glad to have you guys and we're going to have a great discussion today.

Alan Gooding: 1:38

Awesome Thanks, yeah, excited to be here. I mean you had us talking two favorite things the pug and football.

Wes Harris: 1:42

Hey, you can't go wrong with that right. It's always going to be a good day or a good session. Yeah, absolutely so. First and foremost, you guys. For those in the audience that don't know, I met these Gents playing adult rec soccer. Yes, I still play when the injuries aren't insurmountable, which is becoming less frequent nowadays. But I got to introduce these guys a couple of years ago and just have kind of become good friends and so happy to see you guys doing the project there at the Botanical and I may frequent there too much, but that's okay. Alan and you're obviously if folks can't tell from the accent, yes, he is from England and Alex just being well traveled. One of the things I'd love to talk to you guys, just to open things up a little bit, is your experience around soccer culture or footy culture, whatever you want to call it around the world and in places that you've been and experienced, and differences between there and here, being residents of NWA now for multiple years. Yourselves Just kick us off from there and start getting us going there.

Alex Thaley: 2:53

Why don't you?

Alan Gooding: 2:54

start Alan, yeah, I jump in. So England is the stereotype of football soccer. I'll keep changing the words as I've been here 11 years. But you kind of get initiated into whatever team the family's been following or the friends around you have been following. So I went to my first game before I even remember three, four years old. Sheffield Wednesday is my team. Older generation will remember people like John Harksy that played for us and we had a few other testimonials and stuff in the US. Shout out to Harksy, shout out to Harksy. It's called one of the greatest goals ever in 91.

Alan Gooding: 3:30

But growing up with that it's in the north of England. So passions there right the way throughout, I would say, especially if you're familiar with, like West Ham, millwall, rivalries and stuff. But when you've got Liverpool, everton, manchester, both clubs up in the north, you've got Northeast with Newcastle, sunderland, middlesbrough, you've got Sheffield, sheffield United, sheffield Wednesday and everything around that north, it's almost a way of life. People live for the weekend. People just have their mood and almost their entire like weak spoil or made by how the results have gone, especially if they've played each other, how the day-to-day work's going to go. It's crazy. And even just I've lived up and down.

Alan Gooding: 4:07

England lived in China for a little while, been in the US 11 years, but one of the biggest differences you'll get, I think, between European football soccer and especially North America and South America replicates it, but it's kind of the difference between kind of passion and passion slash rivalry.

Alan Gooding: 4:25

I think in the US you have rivalries. Of course there's like I don't know, I'm not super familiar with it, but you might have like a Razorbacks versus like a Louisiana team or something like that, or A&M, when they go down to the stadium but the fans still mix together before and they sit together but they're not aggressive, whereas soccer in South America and Europe is segregation, police enforced, a lot of anger, a lot of trouble before and after the games, a lot of that excitement boiling over. I think that's one of the fundamental differences, because Americans have sport as a passion and enjoyment but as more of a rivalry for conversation and for the community, whereas I think in England it is much more of a way of life and it almost goes into over the topness, I know, but it goes more into like a passion that can be hatred or it can be aggression or frustration or whatever it is, and I'd say that's one of the biggest differences. It's passion, but it's just in different ways.

Wes Harris: 5:22

But, alex, what do you see? You're a very well traveled man and you've been to matches all over the world, pubs all over the world. Now you're a pub owner, an operator. What do you see? In different places that crop up that are different than here?

Alex Thaley: 5:44

I'm a newer soccer fan so in the last seven, probably eight years so I've traveled all over the world and I've enjoyed soccer. I used to train when I lived over in Micronesia my family's from Yap, micronesia little Highland, 450 miles southwest of Guam so I trained with the national team there, which doesn't the state team. It doesn't really mean much, it was just a bunch of dudes around and around.

Wes Harris: 6:05

I didn't know I was playing with a national team squad member.

Alex Thaley: 6:10

Let's just say, when they were timing the 40 yards they just kind of stopped and laughed a little bit.

Wes Harris: 6:16

We had a lot of fun and that was the first time I started the tracks. That didn't help you, sorry, I had to.

Alex Thaley: 6:21

That's a newer addition and I'm sure it does help.

Wes Harris: 6:24

I didn't know if you could just put on some, just like the shoes, when you're little, that make you go faster.

Alex Thaley: 6:28

My shoes light up now too, so that probably adds a little bit. So, growing up, though I was a chunky kid, I did not think it was cool to run. I was not into. And then, growing up, I grew up in the upper peninsula of Michigan. So UP, yeah. So we snowboarded, we did things like where you just kind of rode the momentum. Maybe you didn't have to run the momentum, yeah. But I always appreciated soccer. I knew it was the world sport, just didn't have a lot of exposure to it. Then, overseas, like I said, I did play a little bit and that's when I started to enjoy it and the actual physicality of it and the tactics and the strategy that got me really excited Wasn't until actually. So Alan and I we go back about 10 years now. We're both consultants for a UK firm and working here, and Alan and I became friends and started hanging out. So about eight years ago I adopted Sheffield Wednesday as my team because I didn't have a team Apologies, yeah.

Wes Harris: 7:28

Could have done so much better.

Alex Thaley: 7:30

I always joke around because I'm from Michigan, so I'm a Detroit Lions fan, and a heart can only take so much.

Wes Harris: 7:35

Yeah.

Alex Thaley: 7:36

And we got promoted this last year. We did in the best way possible. I'm feeling like I'm. Oh, that was switched. The Lions are doing all right, but anyways, not to America football, all right, but to Alan's point about, like the, the, the passion that goes into it I had not really seen. I mean, I knew I've been in pubs where people are passionate, but to actually have, like your close year when you know my closest friend so passionate where, like he said it, like in like ruin your day or week, yeah, yeah totally so I'd go as a friend, you know, support him.

Alex Thaley: 8:06

We'd go to the toilet, we'd go in like oh jail, support no. Friend and I, we've always been looking for a reason to go to the pub and, you know, finish Up our work early and watch a game. Oh, I haven't. Oh man, if they won, it's the highs or highs. Yeah and if you lose, you know you just buy the next round and then you like a let me and tell me what you need to take my schedule for the next two hours.

Alan Gooding: 8:28

We lost the playoff Two years ago to Sunderland and I still remember Alex. It was about four in the afternoon when the game finished and we lost right at the end of extra time and Alex just went to my partner and he's like just give him time, just give me the sign next time, just give him the rest of the day.

Alex Thaley: 8:43

And maybe the rest of the week about it, that I was like he's not gonna process this like an Arkansas loss or something. You know, like it's, this is mm-hmm, feels this, yeah, yeah, and so that's what I do. Love that part about it and I like kind of had the balance of that that we can bring to this community. Yeah, that passion. Maybe you know it's not gonna upset someone's whole week, but to bring that passion in the stadium and have the fans that care about it as much or it's like part of their life.

Alex Thaley: 9:10

Yeah where everyone's either season ticket holders or they're going to their pub to watch it. You know, maybe our pub maybe rendezvous a great place to watch the games as well and have that community, but have that like shared sense of either success or loss. Yeah, is awesome yeah and I'm excited that we were able to. Well, you know, I guess over the last eight years it's always been a struggle trying to find some place To watch the game, kind of hearing it back to All right, yeah our livelihood.

Alex Thaley: 9:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah, because we get it from a lot of people too. We're like you know where's a good place to watch the game? We've for years we've been wondering, so sometimes we'd have to take our, we take his laptop into the pub and we just have it pulled up. Mm-hmm. Maybe some place would show it, but they would you know, wouldn't have audio or it's 20 minutes to find it on that, you know.

Wes Harris: 9:58

Especially for Wednesday and, and you know, any team or any other team that's not in a the Premier League or La Liga or anything I mean I keep in the Liga and the US is hard to find.

Alan Gooding: 10:08

Yeah, because where's he gets? 40,000 attendance over there and yeah, and you know a country that's got over a hundred Professional teams, so it's well supported and I know eight, nine Wednesday fans here. But yeah, it's internet only is the only place you're gonna find the games. Yeah, it's tricky to find them and then to find it open at eight, nine in the morning on a Saturday when there's gonna be other people to make it worth the trip. Plus week. Never beer if it's never an game. That's. That's tough and in a size that Bendville's awesome, but it's only so big right, so it should be New York or Chicago. We could find it, but not in Bendville, sadly, not until the vitamin.

Alex Thaley: 10:38

Yeah, so we made it. And yeah, I couldn't find it, so we built it. So it was that we wanted to. We've been talking for years about just pub culture and how it's such an important part of the community and you have so many memories and friendships form there and you know, as an adult, it's just so. It's a great they, if you choose to have that in your life. It's a great, yes, to have a kind of a hub. And if you're in the sports and the sport is, like you know, passionate and strongly followed as, yeah, football, then you know you want them together. So, yeah, we didn't have one. So, yeah, we've been talking about one for a while. So we, we built it. So we built a international Pub mixed with greenhouse aesthetic. We just call it like a pretty pub.

Wes Harris: 11:19

So there's lots of flowers. If you haven't been there, it's a very pretty pub. Yes, we've got.

Alex Thaley: 11:24

So you know, for downtown Bendville standards I think we probably have, you know, the most the biggest TVs. We've got four seventy five inch and one eighty five inch TV that have the games on yep, we play the audio on the big games and it's just a. It's a great turnout. We've had great support from the community. They got. A couple Saturdays ago we opened up, I think, for 8 30 game Mm-hmm, which match. It was it was mine.

Alan Gooding: 11:49

There's Liverpool. Yeah, it was that stupid dramatic one where they went down to nine minutes, where I'd say is gold, with the last key, where I may have walked out of the pub.

Wes Harris: 11:57

I Luckily I've paid my time. I had my time. I did not died in Dash, just to be clear.

Alex Thaley: 12:03

Yeah, no, I actually heard though. Yeah, what's? Uh, you just got up pushing to see it walked out the toilet.

Wes Harris: 12:10

I Certainly did. We all, we all discussed that game. Yes, that took me that. That did take me about a week to get over. So you've got him, got that passion may still not have, may still not be over, but that's okay.

Alex Thaley: 12:21

But I just to that point, just a wrap of that point, though We've had like that day. And then you know, because weekend days, which you wouldn't think of, bar the Oldman's at 9 am on Saturday, sunday, would have to be 30, 35, 40 people out there.

Wes Harris: 12:32

Yeah.

Alex Thaley: 12:33

Watching the game, yeah, wearing their jerseys, cheering for, you know, one of the teams that's on the TVs and it's. It's a lot of fun for someone that's. You know, on the business side, I like to see the right business, but it's even our. All of our staff is who's never worked in a soccer bar. They're like we love this, like we love the energy that everyone brings. You know, if you're gonna be in a working environment and you have just people getting excited, it's sometimes very disappointed, right, but when there's that much like passion involved, it makes your shifts go easier. Yeah, it makes it makes it would just more fun to be there. So, yeah, we're enjoying and our staffs enjoying it.

Wes Harris: 13:06

Yeah, that's great. So keep to kind of keep going on that. So tell people a little bit more about kind of how, how the botanical gets started and what you guys kind of are Talk about where you're located I know it's in your name, but Tell people a little bit more about the pub and kind of what you guys are doing and kind of the vision and long-term goals for the, for the place.

Alan Gooding: 13:31

Yeah, so I like Alex gone to the long-term stuff and he's kind of covered where we came from a little bit, but some of it was. He sounds like a joke and it was out of want to create something we wanted to go to.

Alan Gooding: 13:43

We want to be able to watch the football, we wanted to look nice, we had the lofty ambition of let's make a sports pub that would be great for Families and date night, and still feel like posh for events that people could, you know, go to after work, maybe for stuff and things. And hey, the feedback is that we've got it pretty close.

Alan Gooding: 13:59

So that's a tough dynamic to try to nail down to yeah, and also a nice big patty out the back and we're gonna try and make that season round as well. So we just we wrote down everything we wanted a pub to be, got a bit of inspiration from pubs that we really loved.

Alan Gooding: 14:11

Mm-hmm and then it sounds like a bit of a soppy tagline, but a place for everyone and we've there's so many great guys around Benville and some really good craft ale, but most of them do the same beaters. So we're like, well, if we're gonna do something international, we do something different. Let's try and get a big variety on the menu as well. So we've still got some of the most popular beers around, like home rink a bit, I'd say. About 85% of our menu is imported or from overseas. There's a lot of British beers, a lot of the European beers, we've got some really popular German ones, we've got South African wines, we got drinks from just about all over the place, which is, which is great, and we're only been open a few months, but most of them are selling really well. Guinness is always a staple. That seems to be the biggest thing on a Saturday, sunday morning, because it goes as a combination of breakfast and drink at the same time. But we're just trying to be a place there.

Alan Gooding: 14:55

Two for one, yeah, anyone go to for anything. If they will watch a game, they're gonna know that we're the spot to do it. If they will go for date now, they just want to relax after work. They want somewhere to hang out maybe and just drink one beer while they're reading a book and something. It's just kind of a nice atmosphere and I think you feel that more Maybe in the evenings when we lower the lights and it's kind of go out mood thing going on and You're patty. Plenty of events. Then the and the patio's got it. It was really nice. Yeah, we just wanted, we just wanted to get it right and we want to make it a place that, regardless of why why the reason you go out, get a drink that we'd be it and yeah, I think we go pretty close.

Wes Harris: 15:28

You guys also have. I'm like Thank you, you can thank me later for the advertising, but you guys also have one of you said if that's your jam earlier, if it's not your jam, it's still a fun place to go because you guys have one of the largest mocktail menus, yeah, around in the area. So you guys have something for just about everybody.

Alex Thaley: 15:49

Yeah, we kind of highlighted a few like USB, some niches that were Kind of wide open, and the mocktail is the largest of the fastest growing sector in our industry, mm-hmm. And we've got seven on the menu. Right now we're not doubling it, but we've got about 12 on the new menu that's coming out next week, mm-hmm. And then we've got a whole cooler of yeah not all college sodas.

Alex Thaley: 16:13

Some custom sodas from Colorado is so you can sing, you know, if you're with your, your kids or some of the distance, right then go and just pick something out of there and we'll ring it up. Or you can look on our mocktail menu and there's a lot of, a lot of good options there. That's awesome.

Wes Harris: 16:26

So what has been? I'll ask both of you for kind of your biggest surprise and biggest lesson learned so far in your journey, and it can be construction related, but I'd like it to be more kind of once operational, because I'm sure that could just be a whole different rabbit hole. How many tangents are we allowed on permitting and and all that fun stuff? Because I know that that was a fun process.

Alex Thaley: 16:56

Yeah, this I would say the city has been nice to work with. You hear mixed things, but we had a. We had a good experience with the city. He's right deal at the state there's. Opening any kind of like alcohol related business in Arkansas is still very tricky. Yeah, that's why we just have our beer and wine license. We're doing well with that. So we might do our liquor license someday, but that's. There's just so many layers of permits and, yeah, separate Hoops you have to jump through. But that said, dealing with the state it has been better, slower than expected, but overall better interactions. That's all I'll say about that side of it, I guess.

Wes Harris: 17:32

That's all I have to say about that.

Alan Gooding: 17:36

I'd say I don't know if it's a lesson learned, but it's something that we double down on and boy it's worked out is don't worry about getting experienced bartenders and skills. Just get good people, people that are gonna care, that are gonna work hard, but in the right ways. If they see a dirty table but they're behind the bar, they're gonna go over there and just quickly wipe the table. They're gonna help guess out if they come in with maybe a younger one or they need some extra assistance or whatever in there and the staff are just. They just you can tell they're happy and they really enjoy it. Hope they're happy, but they're definitely Kigar staff, like they are awesome and they're picking up all the skills. They're now great bartenders but before they were just awesome people Cause we just like being around and we're like let's just base that, the hiring around that people that we like and we want to be around every day and hopefully the customers will feel that and the feedback is they are.

Alex Thaley: 18:20

Yeah, you can train someone to pour a beer. You can't train them to be friendly.

Wes Harris: 18:23

Isn't it wild how that works and it seems to be almost ubiquitous across that industry. You can hire good people and teach them skills, but you can't teach somebody to be a good person, yeah Right, and you hear that consistently and it's something that I've tried to live into and whenever I have a role to fill. And obviously there's a certain level of kind of okay, minimum level of requirement in terms of do you have the capacity to understand this and grow and get there? But are you a good human first, and are you coachable, are you willing to learn, are you intellectually curious? All those kind of intangibles that are so much more difficult to hire for and teach than being able to teach somebody a hard skill. But anyway, I cut you off, but like no, that's perfect. It's wild how that just translates, right, like we all three of us have come from a little bit more corporate careers than kind of industries that we're in now or talking about now.

Alex Thaley: 19:25

But I think so much of this is transferable over and anyway, yeah, we definitely wanted to build the place, so we wanted to be. I knew I would be there hours a day for the foreseeable future. So I wanted a place that had a lot of plants, because I like plants that make me happy and they make other people happy. I wanted to be a place with a lot of natural sunlight.

Wes Harris: 19:44

Bight of need yeah.

Alex Thaley: 19:46

Scientifically proven. I was gonna say that's the reason why we spent extra money for all the solar lighting. We don't want to spend any money during the day, the whole the insides all controlled by the sun. So during the day we've got solar tubes that shoot light into the building full spectrum UV for the almost 200 plants in the main area and then when the sun goes down, the main room just naturally gets darker and then we put out some low lighting. That way our bartenders myself, we all stay in sync like with the rhythms of the world and don't turn into like those zombie, vampire bartenders that are just totally out of sync. Yeah, have more health problems than caused by the working environment. So we're trying to be. I would say we were very deliberate about that.

Wes Harris: 20:27

Your circadian rhythm, my circadian rhythm. You see yeah.

Alan Gooding: 20:31

I've got another lesson learned. That's gonna make me sound like an old man I like, because the first one was positive. This one's more like. I used to work at Pubz in England and it's Sky Sports in England, right, direct TV and Cox et cetera here and it was super easy. Football's on it was what channel.

Alan Gooding: 20:42

And now, because everything's online and everything streams, when you look at the commercial licenses for that, we've got like nine different licenses and different stuff to get every sport, because we do have every sport. We've got the soccer, the rugby, the cricket and some of it in there, things like athletics and cycling, but then we've also got NFL and NBA and all that. And when you're at home it's maybe YouTube TV or it's this or it's that. But when you get the proper licenses for it all, you have to go through this vendor and that company and you get some of it through this and some of it through that, and then to get all of that easy on one iPad so you can just quickly change and pivot and the sound oh my God. There's still a headache for us now.

Alex Thaley: 21:14

Yeah, still a headache. We've got a good job on that, yeah, and then we've got like on one TV, it's a thing. But then having on five TVs, and what if you want three TVs to be showing the same thing, sync to the audio, and then you want two? You know, someone wants a Razorback game on over here.

Alan Gooding: 21:27

it's, it's tricky Is that the thing we're streaming. They're always slightly out singing. You put them next to each other.

Alex Thaley: 21:31

Sometimes they're 15 seconds behind, so you reload them and then it's 15 seconds ahead, and then you're like let's just, and we've solved most of this now We've come up with a little.

Alan Gooding: 21:39

Maybe if we put it all through this one box, then it will go throughout the one cable and then it'll split and it works. So we figured it nearly all out, but tangs.

Wes Harris: 21:45

Yeah, the tech and getting the what you would think wouldn't be maybe an issue. You know, I think that that's always. You know, keep your eyes open and don't just assume that something's not gonna be a problem.

Alan Gooding: 21:59

Yeah, if anyone's gonna open any kind of sport bar venue, do open it like plan that six months in advance, cause it'll take that long to figure it out.

Alex Thaley: 22:04

I saw anyone that's done what we've done, I think, can attest to that. There's so many like tiny, tiny things that you would not think need weeks or months of planning or preparation or just you have to investigate. I mean, that's our TV licenses, music licensing, totally separate. But again, going back to the deliberate, like vibe or the feel of the place, we wanted to have control over how it felt what we had on the TVs. We weren't gonna leave it up to, you know, just a jukebox or something that was there. Again, just very deliberate. I want to go back real quick to just about the people. Yeah, One thing that's allowed us to kind of execute the hiring the personality over experience. Not to say that you know, the mix of our bartenders don't have a range of experiences. We do get lucky. I'm gonna give a shout out to our GM, Ryan Ross, and our assistant manager, M's Robinson. We were able to get them well in advance and they were able to stabilize operationally things.

Alex Thaley: 23:01

So, then we could hire and it allowed us a little more freedom to let's hire this person we really like that fits with the culture, that gets it, and then we can up skill them. That's just been a blessing and so for me, a lessons learner, maybe just something that very appreciative of was it being able to. I feel very lucky that we got those two people that work well together. Different personalities, but they fit in well. They fit in well with, like my personality with.

Alex Thaley: 23:25

Alan's. M's is very good at keeping even the owners in check. Ryan's good at sailing with everyone Any kind of team dynamic and keeping it balanced and then just operating. He's operated so many bars, so that's his experience has helped a lot. That's so that allowed us to then focus on making sure. So you know Alan makes sure that the entertainment's right. You know I make sure that the vibe or the aesthetic stays on point or to the vision, and in this industry you always have to. There's always so many like inputs and things that go on. You have to kind of guard your vision pretty closely. So it's nice when you have someone that can has your back, like your staff and partners, so you can keep kind of working and moving forward on those things.

Wes Harris: 24:07

No, that's good. So you both have been residents of Northwest Arkansas for a little over a decade, approaching a decade.

Wes Harris: 24:17

And now 12, 12 years, okay, so over a decade, over a decade.

Wes Harris: 24:21

So talk a little bit about your experience just as residents and you talked a little bit about it. I mean, hell, you built a bar because you didn't have a place that you could go to watch the footage, right, so like we've got that covered. But like, talk about the growth of the region as residents, as people that are engaged in the community, and you know I have we talk about it all day long, about how you know, how the club is gonna be integrated into the community, very grassroots, right time, right place and all those things. But you know, talk to me a little bit about that and the growth and the stage that we're at. Does it fit? We feel like it does, but does it fit now to bring this type of thing with the global population that we have now over 60% of the population basis, and from here and soccer is the global game Just talk a little bit about like kind of more NWA, the community, and how we might fit in, how you guys can see that, and exciting to see soccer become a bigger thing.

Alan Gooding: 25:28

Yeah, I guess I can start on that one. So I'll be honest. When I first moved it so I lived in Shanghai right before I moved here, which was then was the biggest city in the world turns population to then move to. Well, I'll bend gold, I never had enough. I start on so that it just became a wet county. And I thought people were teasing me for about three weeks when they kept saying, oh, you can drink it now, and like a few months ago you couldn't. I thought I didn't realize that was ever a thing. So it was. I wasn't super comfortable when I would. I first moved here and then it seems very sparse and spread out and there's no public transport. A lot of things I was used to. But one thing I quickly realized is one is a lot more diverse and international than it first seems. So I quickly found a group of Brits to start playing football with first thing in the morning.

Alan Gooding: 26:09

There is so many community driven things, whether it's things around the square or it's different events at different locations in terms of just getting people together for whatever it is. Maybe there's an event at the church for a trunk or tree or a Christmas event and all this kind of stuff. So there was lots of things there as kind of a new family that we were, that you can, you existed, but you had to go and look for them. What I think has changed, other than just the scale of Bentonville in the last two years, is that community has just got so much more in terms of its events and the things that are going on, but it hasn't lost its closeness and what makes it special. I don't think there's anywhere or if there is, I've never seen it a place like Bentonville with a community where, of course, it feels safe and secure and it is still diverse but it feels like one community. They'll come out and support anything, which I guess is the first reason why I think the soccer team's a great idea is I don't have to start in the razorbacks.

Alan Gooding: 26:57

But if there's an event like the farmers market first Friday downtown Bentonville, it's full. If there's a Christmas parade going on, it's full. If there is a celebration of something happening somewhere, you can guarantee you go there and it's gonna be a bunch of people, some that you know, some that you don't. But I think Bentonville's community is just very supportive. They're very outgoing. I think we've got an obscene amount of restaurants and bars for a place as small as we are, but they all do very well. They're all there because I think the community just likes being out and about amongst themselves.

Alan Gooding: 27:25

They're very family orientated and I think when you combine that with the big corporations of international travelers that have come here, when you go further south down to like Rogers and Fayetteville soccer team seems like a no brainer. It's the most diverse international thing going in terms of sport. It'll combine those that are just curious, those that wanna be with a family and those that are just lunatics about kicking a ball around, and it'll bring them all together the way Bentonville and North West Altonstall does. So I love it here. This is how I guess I could have still chose anywhere. I've chose this as my home from everywhere I've been and I don't see myself going anywhere.

Alex Thaley: 27:55

So yeah, yeah, same for me. As far as making a home there was, we thought we might have had to move a couple of years ago and I was like you know, it's a sad face.

Wes Harris: 28:04

we never would have.

Alex Thaley: 28:07

I was gonna support the move. It worked well for my wife's career. You know I'm gonna support that. I really don't wanna move Because we live right behind the school that my kids go to. We've got all the neighbors, our friends. We've got like what you'd wish for if you were like you know 40-year-old guy with a family that was settling down. Unfortunately that didn't work, or maybe fortunately, but I was very happy to stay here and then doubled down when we started out.

Alex Thaley: 28:36

You're definitely putting a lot into this bar. It's nice to have. It's a this community's. Yeah, it's awesome, it's home.

Alan Gooding: 28:47

We've seen you at some of the events we've done too. Like we did a Harry Potter trivia full. We did a flower arranging workshop thing with Samantha's Garden on Monday and it was 15, 20 people there to do that and we got a comedy night that's gonna be sold out. There's like it seems to be. Whatever we put on, there is a big enough interested group that will come out and support it, which is awesome.

Wes Harris: 29:04

And that's been great. I love. You know a lot of the growth is, you know, yes, the people, but it's also infrastructure, it's the amenities, it's the entertainment which you know, unfortunately, fortunately, whatever you want to look at it, some of those things haven't quite kept pace with the, with the people and also the, the dynamic of the people that we're bringing, like the global population, and so you know, there's a little bit of an entertainment gap. Like I love my razorbacks, I love going to, you know, the football games, the baseball games we were just at on Sunday, the Lady Razorbacks Shout out to Mr Colby Hale went in a share of his SEC championship, fourth one. So I think I said that correctly. Sorry, colby, if it's more or less, but just you know, great atmosphere. They had over 3,000 people there. It was their, I think, their fourth top 10 attendance, like in the country this year.

Wes Harris: 30:06

So it's just, I think it speaks to you know people love NWA, but they also love new things to do and this is certainly going to fit that bill. I think that you know it's. It's really interesting and cool to see the increasing diversity of the region and people bringing new thought leadership into what the region could be and where it needs to go. And you know, I think the botanical kind of for me represents part of that. You guys took bar concept but you made it your own and made it distinct and made it different and something that you know I know we're friends, but it's something that's really unique and different and cool and I think that that's again speaks to people want to come and you're getting great crowds and hopefully that sustains, but at least in the beginning, for sure, it's kind of the new thing Now and you guys are getting that buzz and you know people come and they have a good experience, they're going to come back.

Alex Thaley: 31:08

Right, we really did kind of smash two concepts together you know the sports pub, but then a beautiful, but you didn't go themed and early on people like, well, do you know what your business plan is? I'm like, yeah, that's what it is. And they're like, well, you have to kind of pick one. I'm like you have to trust us. No, I don't. And this is a physical space in this city with this population, international population, disposable income and the like. You know, you have to trust the income that have an interest in international sports and with the vision that we have for I'm like this will work. Yeah, it will work, and it's not going to be as obtuse as it sounds without seeing it and honestly, there was a lot that. It was the week before we opened, people came in and people close to us like, oh, we get it now. Yeah, like we couldn't visualize it. Obviously, no one's going to visualize it. No, yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you're explaining it, you're like it's a soccer bar that has a lot of plants and who are you trying?

Alan Gooding: 31:58

to attract. As soon as you say that, you look at them like because they I don't know they think, yeah, like the wargons or I'm like, you can be both. You can be a nice place to hang out that shows sport. You can be and I mentioned before, the community comes and supports stuff, but there's a high bar in Northwest Ireland so you can't just pedal out, copy and paste crap, because they will just hammer down on that hard and it will not last long. So we also know the standards had to be super high in everything that we did and that'll be the same right. People come out and support that team. They haven't got to win every game, no. But if the owners care and the staff care and the players care and everyone that shows up is like they want it to be the best it can be, then it'll be there forever.

Wes Harris: 32:35

And I think people can see right through that right, especially your soccer community, and you know to a degree to your point. You know NWA is a whole right and so we very much are aware of that, and so that's going to be kind of mission critical and a part of everything that we do is being genuine, transparent and living into what we say. And so you know, I'm really looking forward to those days where you know we're having matches to play and and you know atmospheres to create and you know, there will be times where we need to be held accountable and all those fun things.

Wes Harris: 33:15

We're never going to be perfect Nobody is but I'm so excited to you know, to bring what we all know and love and have experienced around the world and other parts of the world to the place that we have chosen to call home right, and I think that that's one of yes, you can't, you can't replace that feeling right, and I think you guys maybe have felt that with, with what you've done with the botanical is. This is you know you're putting a flag on the ground with your family, and how exciting is it to be able to dream of something, think of it and then see it through. Obviously, it was a long road, longer road than you guys wanted it to be, and lots of hurdles and all those things, but like how satisfying to see that come to fruition now and and just the success that you guys have had. I mean, we're different journeys but almost the same and a little bit of the same respects.

Alex Thaley: 34:10

Right, that's perfect. But I think that's like as a business owner, as an American you know, I was born in the US, american business owner it's kind of there's something kind of like. There's like an ideal about, if you're going to make a business, especially a physical space, that you want it to be a little not lofty, but it's something like, yeah, a little better than it's not to aspire to, or something that represents how you want things to be Like. We want that kind of space like where it's open for everyone, it's family friendly, it's dog friendly, it's people of all ages, people of any sport, any, from wherever they are. Especially, it's one of the few places or maybe not unique in Benville, but there's one of the places you go to and you often hear accents all around you.

Wes Harris: 34:49

Yeah.

Alex Thaley: 34:50

And that's awesome, like we talked about that early on, like we wanted a place where there's just not American people there, there's people all around, and like it represents the America that I love that. I grew up thinking about that would be inclusive and would have all those things. So it's cool to build that. And then a place like Benville is awesome. It's I joke around sometimes that Benville is kind of like, you know, like Norman Rockwell paintings of like Americana.

Alex Thaley: 35:18

He went downtown to any of the squares he'd be like come on guys that's a little heavy-handed, like it's because it's perfect, like it is always too, like it's like pleasant to sometimes, but it's not superficial, it's not like cheesy, it's just. We have these things, there's people that genuinely enjoy them, there's the economy to support, to having that and having the infrastructure there and then allows us you don't have to worry about the crime so we can build entertainment, we can do those kind of things that allow a family to be there and then use their time, you know, to explore and to have passions and be that kind of stuff. So it's fun.

Wes Harris: 35:55

That's awesome. Well, guys, thank you so much for joining me it was fun.

Wes Harris: 35:58

I may have to. We may have to just follow back, fall back to the botanical for a pint after. But listen, everybody, go check out the botanical at 8th and A. If you have not already, you may bump into me while you're there, or Mr Allen or Mr Alex, but anyway, guys, thank you guys so much for joining me Again. Check us out usllarkonsawcom. We're still doing fan voting on stuff. There's a ton of giveaways. Follow us on all social media platforms at USL Arkansas. Follow the podcast at Pitch to Pro All major platforms. Appreciate you guys so much for joining me again today and until next time, north West Arkansas, thanks, thanks, thanks for having me.